For many solutions, crèmes and soft solids the active ingredient is only a small portion of the product. Much of these products are composed of other ingredients, adjuvants, which provide benefit to the product. These adjuvants convey benefit to the product in a variety of ways. Some adjuvants allow the active ingredient to be applied in a particular manner, by changing or assisting to change the concentration, feel or viscosity of the solution. Such classes of this type of adjuvants are emulsifiers, conditioners, surfactants, structurants, and thickeners. Other adjuvants protect the active ingredient or the product as whole from disintegrating from its desired form. Humectants, temperature stabilizers and chemical stabilizers are classes of this type of adjuvant. Still other adjuvants provide an aesthetic appeal to the appearance of product. Adjuvants of this type can be further classified as opacificers, colorants or pearlizing agents.
Many different substances have been experimented with for their ability to act as an adjuvant of one type or another, even to fulfill multiple roles. Both naturally occurring substances and chemically synthesized substances have been experimented with. For instance, waxes, oils, alcohols, fatty acids, petroleum products, esters, salts and polymers have all been used in the past. However, to this date there is a desire for an adjuvant that can be used in various roles and is created in a manner that is pleasing to the consumer.
Consumers and manufacturers are increasingly concerned with the environmental impact of all products. The effort towards environmental impact awareness is a universal concern, recognized by government agencies. The Kyoto Protocol amendment to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) currently signed by 156 nations is one example of a global effort to favor safer environmental manufacturing over cost and efficiency. Consumers are increasingly selective about the origins of the products they purchase. The 2004 Co-operative Bank's annual Ethical Consumerism Report (www.co-operativebank.co.uk) disclosed a 30.3% increase in consumer spending on ethical retail products (a general classification for environmental safe, organic and fair trade goods) between 2003 and 2004 while total consumer spending during the same period rose only 3.7%.
One of the single greatest environmental concerns to consumers is the global warming effect and greenhouse gases that contribute to the effect. Greenhouse gases are gases that allow sunlight to enter the atmosphere freely. When sunlight strikes the Earth's surface, some of it is reflected back towards space as infrared radiation. Greenhouse gases absorb this infrared radiation and trap the heat in the atmosphere. Over time, the amount of energy sent from the sun to the Earth's surface should be about the same as the amount of energy radiated back into space, leaving the temperature of the Earth's surface roughly constant. However, increasing the quantity of greenhouse gases above the quantity that existed before the rise of human industrialization is thought to increase the retained heat on the Earth's surface and produce the global warming observed in the last two centuries.
Carbon dioxide is singled out as the largest component of the collection of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The level of atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased 50% in the last two hundred years. Any further addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere is thought to further shift the effect of greenhouse gases from stabilization of global temperatures to that of heating. Consumers and environmental protection groups alike have identified industrial release of carbon into the atmosphere as the source of carbon causing the greenhouse effect. Only organic products composed of carbon molecules from renewably based sources such as plant sugars and starches and ultimately atmospheric carbon are considered to not further contribute to the greenhouse effect, when compared to the same organic molecules that are petroleum or fossil fuel based.
In addition to adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, current methods of industrial production of propanediols produce contaminants and waste products that include among them sulfuric acid, hydrochloric acid, hydrofluoric acid, phosphoric acid, tartaric acid, acetic acids, alkali metals, alkaline earth metals, transitional metals and heavy metals, including Iron, cobalt, nickel, copper, silver, molybdenum, tungsten, vanadium, chromium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium, rubidium, and platinum (U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,434,110, 5,034,134, 5,334,778, and 5,10,036).
There is a need for all manufacturers to provide products with reduced environmental impacts, and to especially consider the carbon load on the atmosphere. There is also an environmental advantage for manufacturers to provide products of renewably based sources. Further, there is a need for a proven personal care adjuvant, which is produced with no or little increase to the present carbon-dioxide level in the environment.
Published U.S. Patent Application No. 2005/0069997 discloses a process for purifying 1,3-propanediol from the fermentation broth of a cultured E. coli that has been bioengineered to synthesize 1,3-propanediol from sugar. The basic process entails filtration, ion exchange and distillation of the fermentation broth product stream, preferably including chemical reduction of the product during the distillation procedure. Also provided are highly purified compositions of 1,3-propanediol.